


Sons of Haven

by enemyfrigate



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Comfort Sex, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2011-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:41:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemyfrigate/pseuds/enemyfrigate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan finds him on the deck at the Gull, staring out to sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sons of Haven

Her name is Jean. Somehow Duke gets through lunch with Audrey, every thought, every word spoken, every bite shadowed with that knowledge.

Duke spends the rest of the day on autopilot. All he can think is, Jean. Luckily he’s not expected to cook because he’d probably set something, probably himself, on fire.

His phone chimes around twilight - he’d just let it go but that’s the Audrey chime - and she’s sent a picture. Jean’s picture. His daughter.

Nathan finds him on the deck at the Gull, staring out to sea.

His phone, clutched in his hand, still shows Jean’s picture. He looks at it every few minutes, trying to inoculate himself. He never met her, he never even knew about her ‘til this morning, when she’d already been born. He has to forget her. For his own sake, to live, he must erase her from his mind.

Impossible.

Nathan comes to stand next to him and takes the phone from Duke’s hand. Duke can’t remember last night, really, but he feels like something’s changed between them.

Whatever. He’s got bigger things to forget.

Nathan turns the phone off, and holds it out to Duke.

He tucks it away in the usual pocket.

“Audrey says, she says you held her. Jean,” Duke says. Nathan stands next to him, and they stare out to sea. The privilege of men who don’t speak of emotions.

“Yeah,” Nathan says.

“Thanks for, for letting her know someone cared,” Duke says.

“It was my privilege,” Nathan says. He means it.

Duke scrubs his hands over his face.

“She’s beautiful,” Nathan says. “She has your eyes.”

That does it. Duke presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, to stop the wetness there.

Nathan puts an arm around his shoulder, and stands there silent at his side.

Duke feels - fuck, he doesn’t know what he feels. There’s always been the possibility that he left a kid behind in some port somewhere, no matter how careful he was, but this is different. Abstract, and all the harder for it.

Nathan’s arm is solid against his spine. He’s been there for Duke, looked at him like he was human, like he was one of Nathan’s responsibilities, since all this started. He wonders what it would be like to have that all the time.

He hopes Jean has that in her life, with her new family.

Wind skates in over the cove, ruffling up the water. He can see it coming, years on the sea making the movement of air and the trail it leaves as easy to read as a street sign. He shivers. Nathan tightens his grip.

“Come home with me,” Duke says.

Maybe that was stupid. Maybe he doesn’t care.

Nathan opens his mouth.

Duke braces himself. He makes it a rule to never take no for a final answer - though sometimes that answer can be a long, hard chase.

“Okay,” Nathan says.

 

Full dark has fallen already when Duke steps on deck. He looks around him, wondering if anything has changed, but it all looks the same. He’s lived a lifetime in the last few days, but here he is, at the beginning again, young and healthy.

Well, he has left a permanent mark on the world, or at least halfway. Duke wonders, now, whether Jean’s existence will change him, too.

Nathan touches his back, between his shoulder blades. Waits for Duke to move. Duke turns toward his living quarters, and Nathan tangles their fingers together, gives him a little tug.

Duke follows along. Lights from the dock slide over Nathan’s face, his throat. He’s breathing a little faster, it seems. Duke fancies he can see his pulse jump in his throat.

In the bedroom, Duke drops his shirt, strips out of his tee-shirt. Nathan mirrors him. Takes hold of Duke’s belt and tows him closer. Duke presses against him. The kiss is slow. Intimate. Almost comforting.

It’s just what Duke wants, right here, right now - until Nathan’s hand drops to his ass and he remembers why they’re here.

Adrenalin scours his nerve endings. Duke takes hold of Nathan’s skull, feels himself hardening, fast. Not like with Helena, when he went from truck to deck to bed in a euphoria of need, everything inevitable, everything bought with hazy pleasure, but this time, with Nathan, like it always is.

Blood beating and humid air and inconveniently messy sheets. Adjusting that inch to kiss Nathan, who’s a hell of a lot taller than his usual bed partners, though still not his equal in height. The kind of kissing where you knock teeth and sometimes kind of miss and probably do the one thing your partner hates, but it’s heating, it’s a rush, it’s a voyage of discovery and those are never easy.

This is living. This is life.

Nathan pushes Duke towards the bed, and Duke paces backward, Nathan’s grip on his hips, and sits down, on the corner. Nathan moves smoothly with him, kneels as he sits, and has Duke’s belt and fly open, his cock out. And he goes down, and Duke mutters, “Nate, fuck.”

Like everything else, Nathan takes cock-sucking seriously. He’s not very practiced, but Duke doesn’t care. He flops back on the bed as Nathan drags that quiet mouth up the underside of his dick, tongue flicking to outline the head.

It’s fast, because Duke is wound up, and amazing, because Duke never thought of this. It’s going to be one of his fantasies, Duke realizes, right before he comes: this one moment in time where Nathan, who disapproves of him on general principle, probably even as he’s pitying him, is on his knees for Duke.

Nathan gets to his feet, pulls off boots, jeans, boxers. Duke watches him through half open eyes. He’s still beautiful under his clothes, like Duke remembers from covert glances in the locker room in high school.

Duke reaches up and grabs Nathan’s arm when he puts one knee on the bed, and yanks. Nathan sprawls next to him. “Subtle,” he says.

“Direct,” Duke says. He rolls over and reaches for Nathan’s cock. Gets a nice handful of firm flesh and squeezes. Nathan sighs, stretches onto his back.

Duke shifts onto his front, props himself on his elbows, and swallows Nathan’s cock. The organ is warm and alive. Duke hasn’t done this in awhile, but he figures, if you’ve ever gotten a good blow job, you should be able to give one.

Nathan’s breathing quickens as Duke engulfs him. He mutters, oh yeah, there, yeah, like he doesn’t know he’s doing it.

Duke mouths him, uses the flat of his tongue.

Tries to replace Helena’s presence in this bed with Nathan’s sounds, the breathy encouragements, the choked off groans, the heady scent of male sweat, the tang of pre-come.

The rough, not affection, not really, but connection he has with Nathan, the last 25 years of his life, their lives, binding them together.

He takes Nathan deep, misjudges a little, gags. Goes back in for more, rhythm lost, but apparently he’s doing something right, because Nathan comes, arches off the bed, lets out a long breath.

Duke wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Shoves boots and jeans off and crawls up next to Nathan, who turns on his side and drapes an arm over his belly.

“Thanks,” Duke says.

“Likewise.” Nathan kisses him, almost sweet.

Duke crooks his elbow around Nathan’s neck and pulls him closer. They kiss again, lazy, nearly affectionate. Nathan shifts a leg between Duke’s, half covers him.

“Tough couple of days,” Duke says. He’s not sure he can say thank you again, but he figures Nathan will get it.

“It ended up okay,” Nathan says, hovering over him in the dark. “Hey, don’t you have a rule about talking to cops?”

“This isn’t talking,” Duke says. He slides fingertips down the back of Nathan’s thigh.

Nathan shuts up.

 

The still of the night, and Duke is wide awake again. Beside him, Nathan sleeps. Moving slow, Duke slides out of bed, draws on jeans, and pads out onto deck. He finds his way to the stern and leans against the rail, head tilted back to catch sight of the pole star. His own pole star, his own totem.

He won’t shake this weird melancholy from his bones anytime soon. Facing mortality is nothing to facing the fact of new life. One that is half his responsibility.

Yet, she isn’t his responsibility and she can’t be.

He hopes Jean will end up having people, not just friends or family or lovers, but people who understand her and will stand by her because of all the things they’ve shared, whether they wanted to or not: high school classmates, and old employers, and the pastor down the street at a church she didn’t even go to. The girl she never got along with in kindergarten. The teacher who disapproves. The shopkeeper who watched her count out pennies for a bag of M & Ms.

That’s why Duke comes back to Haven, no matter how far he wanders in the world. His people are here. His friends, his ancestors. His enemies and the people always in his orbit, like it or not. Like Nathan.

He looks up at the pole star, and makes a wish: May you always have people to come back to, baby girl. Godspeed.

Duke makes his way back amidships, back to Nathan.

Like it or not, he and Nathan belong to each other.

They’re both sons of Haven, after all.  
Tags:  
duke, fic, haven,


End file.
